Our family enjoyed using the book: Lives of the Musicians: Good Times, Bad Times (and What the Neighbors Thought) by Kathleen Krull , as a read-aloud and then listening to some of the songs by the composers on Amazon Prime, or You Tube. I like the book because it helps children relate to composers as real people, and it moves up through history ending with a music the children have likely heard (if they have seen any Star Wars). For folk songs I think more about what would be considered modern folk songs in the time and place we live in. I don't think the point was to teach children obscure songs that they had never heard of, but rather that they could join in singing that might happen in public places. We used a lot of songs by Wee Sing, which are booklets and CD's of children's songs with different themes. (Christmas, America, Nursery etc.) I felt this covered the spirit of intent in teaching children folk songs and was both fun and easy to incorporate. We often did singing in the car when they were young, since they had to sit anyways, and it was a good way to stave off boredom on car rides.